[Ann] CintaNotes 2.8 Beta 2

Thomas Lohrum
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Re: Ctrl+Alt+S broken

Postby Thomas Lohrum » Wed Oct 08, 2014 6:59 pm

usbpoweredfridge wrote:
CintaNotes Developer wrote:I agree here. But the question remains: what to do when the user click on the bold state representing "current"? Just silently ignore it and close the menu?
Yes, that's precisely what should happen. (...)

I second this.

Thomas
Thomas Lohrum
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Re: Ctrl+Alt+S broken

Postby Thomas Lohrum » Wed Oct 08, 2014 7:20 pm

CintaNotes Developer wrote:
Thomas Lohrum wrote:i use CintaNotes differently. I use "All sections" in 98% of my use cases. Occasionally i do a search limited to one section only. Until now i never had the need to select more than one section, though i agree it is great to have this possibility. As always different users have different needs. I rather suggest to never show [All sections]. That is, if nothing is added it means "all". Always show a single or multiple sections inside squared brackets. Imo this makes sense, because this state is different to "all". Also you mention the "active one" (section), but unless you add it to the history, how would i know which one is the active one?
That's a fair comment. The only problem that I see here is that when the user works in just one section (and I guess there're plenty of users who do it, I'd even argue that this is a majority), the history will be filled up with useless "from Main, from Main, from Main..."

This is an assumption. No problem with that. But let me assume, that in rare cases the user switches to a different section. Even the Freemium version supports three sections. Now you must add it to the history, because otherwise it can not be distinguished at all. There is no such thing as an active section. It's more a guess on which section is used most of the times. However, the latter can be nailed down to the inbox section, don't you think?! How about the following suggestion?

Suggestion:

  • If there is only one section active and that section is the inbox, don't add a section marker to the visible history list.
  • If there is only one section active and that section is not the inbox, add the section marker, e.g. [Section].
  • If there are multiple sections active, add them to the list, e.g. [Section1,Section2,etc.]
  • If 'all' sections is active, don't add a section marker.

As of writing this, i realize this leads to the situation when the first can not be distinguished from the last. Personally i don't have a problem with this. One option though, could be an ini setting, which allows the user to configure, whether he prefers the "from [inbox]" or the "from [all]" style.

Thomas

PS: As you might have guessed, i am not a fan of "from all, from all, from all" ;)
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 2.8 Beta 2

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Thu Oct 09, 2014 4:11 am

gunars wrote:1) The "ink" tag had been in use for over a month and had about 12 notes tagged with it.
2) They were all tagged, one by one, in the Note Edit dialog as I created them. I did use F4 to retag them after the tag was lost. Since the word "ink" existed in the text as well, I could still search and then retag them with F4.
3) Yes, I did edit some of the notes afterwards, but not to touch the "ink" tag and probably not any other tags either. I probably had only one edit window open at a time, but there could have been another once or twice. Also, most of these notes originated by clipping from a web page.


Gunars, thanks for the info! It will definitely help in tracking the problem down.

gunars wrote:Have there been any changes in how CN interacts with Dropbox? I sometimes see DB indexing a file called cintanotes.db-journal. Maybe this was there before and I didn't notice it. I've been noticing it more because sometimes (not always) it seems to take DB a long time to index cintanotes.db and upload it after changes, so I've been keeping an eye on the status.

Thomas is right, this is a rollback journal created during transactions. You can turn it off via setting sqlite.pragma.journal_mode to "MEMORY". But I wouldn't recommend doing that, because it will make your DB much more susceptible to corruption:
The MEMORY journaling mode stores the rollback journal in volatile RAM. This saves disk I/O but at the expense of database safety and integrity. If the application using SQLite crashes in the middle of a transaction when the MEMORY journaling mode is set, then the database file will very likely go corrupt. (Taken from here)


UPD: Here is a nice tip on how to make Dropbox ignore certain file: http://superuser.com/a/757498
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Re: Severe bug: tags can get lost

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Thu Oct 09, 2014 4:18 am

Thomas Lohrum wrote:1) How many uses did this tag have prior to your editing?
A: 12
...

Thomas, thanks a lot for the answers and additional details!
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Re: Ctrl+Alt+S broken

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Thu Oct 09, 2014 4:28 am

Thomas Lohrum wrote:This is an assumption. No problem with that. But let me assume, that in rare cases the user switches to a different section. Even the Freemium version supports three sections. Now you must add it to the history, because otherwise it can not be distinguished at all. There is no such thing as an active section. It's more a guess on which section is used most of the times. However, the latter can be nailed down to the inbox section, don't you think?! How about the following suggestion?

Hm, but each section has its own separate filter history. Navigation between sections is not recorded in the history, unless extra sections are added to the active one. Probably this is also bad UI because in some way this is a hidden state. But I'm sure that making the history global for all sections is not the way to go. It will be weird because it will contradict the web browser behavior the users are so accustomed to.

Thomas Lohrum wrote:Suggestion:
  • If there is only one section active and that section is the inbox, don't add a section marker to the visible history list.
  • If there is only one section active and that section is not the inbox, add the section marker, e.g. [Section].
  • If there are multiple sections active, add them to the list, e.g. [Section1,Section2,etc.]
  • If 'all' sections is active, don't add a section marker.

I can't agree with this. Whether the section is inbox or not is irrelevant. All that matters in which section was selected first, i.e.
is active. In my terminology, many sections can be selected, but only one can be active, and the displayed history belongs to it.

One option though, could be an ini setting, which allows the user to configure, whether he prefers the "from [inbox]" or the "from [all]" style.

Not more options, please ;) I think we should be able to arrive at a solution that will acceptable for all usage scenarios.

As you might have guessed, i am not a fan of "from all, from all, from all" ;)

Yes I suspected that ;) But I'm afraid you'll have to bite the bullet here. The only way to make things simple is to get away with the hidden state and always display the full context. That means always display all selected sections, shortening to "All" when necessary. In 2.8.1 it can be improved via displaying sections as small color boxes, and using a special icon for "all".
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Re: Ctrl+Alt+S broken

Postby Thomas Lohrum » Thu Oct 09, 2014 7:09 am

CintaNotes Developer wrote:Hm, but each section has its own separate filter history.

Though you did write this before, it is only now that i actually understand what you say ;) The history will be managed (owned) by each section separately. Now recalling on our discussion i feel like Chris, when he said "i don't even understand what you are talking about" LOL - In that case i agree with your design goals. But what about the "all" section? It also does have its own history? In the end it means "all" sections are selected. In that case it could be shortened to "all". My thinking is just different. To me a section is like a filter and all means no filter applied. I use 'all' most of the time, since it does not require me to change to a section first. I can find and manage my notes easily with this approach. This is also the reason why i don't like the idea of extra showing of "all" in the history menu.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:All that matters in which section was selected first, i.e. is active. In my terminology, many sections can be selected, but only one can be active, and the displayed history belongs to it.

Agreed.

Thomas
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 2.8 Beta 2

Postby gunars » Thu Oct 09, 2014 9:59 pm

I ran into another tag problem, but moved the discussion over to Bug Reports -> Tag problem.
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Re: Ctrl+Alt+S broken

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Mon Oct 13, 2014 3:56 am

Thomas Lohrum wrote:Though you did write this before, it is only now that i actually understand what you say ;) The history will be managed (owned) by each section separately. Now recalling on our discussion i feel like Chris, when he said "i don't even understand what you are talking about" LOL - In that case i agree with your design goals.

Actually I'm starting to feel that we've made a huge design error when we first implemented sections. That is, we tried to separate them as much as possible, having own filter/view state and such. It seems to have greatly complicated things instead of making them easier to understand. Probably it would be better if everything was global - history, every filter, sorting.

Thomas Lohrum wrote:But what about the "all" section? It also does have its own history?

You see? Even after 10 times I said that "all' is not a section, you still make this mistake. Clearly this is a design error!

Thomas Lohrum wrote:In the end it means "all" sections are selected.

It means not just that. If you have N sections, then depending on which section was selected first, there can be N different "All" selections, each with its own history.

Thomas Lohrum wrote:In that case it could be shortened to "all". My thinking is just different. To me a section is like a filter and all means no filter applied. I use 'all' most of the time, since it does not require me to change to a section first. I can find and manage my notes easily with this approach. This is also the reason why i don't like the idea of extra showing of "all" in the history menu.

This is actually really close to how sections are implemented - like a filter. But the idea was different. The idea was to divide the notebook into relatively independent parts. And as far as I can see now, the idea was not that good. Probably we should consider turning sections into categories, and using tabs for something else - for example, opened notebooks like is suggested here.
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 2.8 Beta 2

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Mon Oct 13, 2014 4:31 am

gunars wrote:I ran into another tag problem, but moved the discussion over to Bug Reports -> Tag problem.

Answered there, thanks Gunars.
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Re: [Ann] CintaNotes 2.8 Beta 2

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Mon Oct 13, 2014 10:58 am

Guys,

2.8 Beta 3 is now available - any feedback greatly appreciated! Thanks
Alex

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